Netherlands

The Netherlands is a small country in northwest Europe. It sits along the North Sea, with Germany to the east and Belgium to the south. The country is about twice the size of the state of New Jersey and home to roughly 18 million people. Its capital is Amsterdam, though the government meets in a different city called The Hague.

The name "Netherlands" means "low lands," and the country earns it. About a quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level. The lowest point sits 22 feet under the sea, lower than a two-story house is tall. Much of the flat land you see today was once part of the sea or a swamp. Dutch people pumped the water out and built walls called dikes to keep it out.

This work of holding back water has gone on for almost a thousand years. At first, people used windmills to pump water off the land into canals. Later they used steam engines, and today they use electric pumps. The Dutch are considered world experts at water control. When other countries face flooding, they often ask Dutch engineers for help.

You may have heard the Netherlands called "Holland." Holland is actually just two provinces inside the country, the part around Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Calling the whole country Holland is a little like calling the whole United States "California." The government asks people to use "the Netherlands" instead.

The country is famous for a few things besides water. Tulips bloom in huge, bright fields each spring, even though the flowers first came from Turkey hundreds of years ago. Windmills, wooden shoes called klompen, and round yellow wheels of Gouda cheese are all Dutch symbols. The Netherlands also has more bicycles than people. In many Dutch cities, more people ride bikes to work than drive cars.

Dutch artists changed the history of painting. Rembrandt painted shadowy portraits in the 1600s that still hang in museums around the world. Two hundred years later, Vincent van Gogh painted swirling sunflowers and starry skies. The young diarist Anne Frank also lived in the Netherlands. She hid with her family in an Amsterdam attic during World War II, and her diary is now read in dozens of languages.

Today the Netherlands is known as one of the world's most inventive small countries. Its farmers grow more food per acre than almost anyone else. Its engineers build islands out of the sea. A land that could easily have been lost to water became, instead, a country built by standing up to it.